Good morning and welcome to our daily Brexit briefing.
The big picture
If tensions were predicted between Theresa May at No 10 and Boris Johnson’s foreign office they spilled out on to the streets over the weekend with a standoff between their respective chief mousers, Larry the Downing St cat and Palmerston the Foreign Office kitty.
The business of the post-EU referendum government is now gathering pace. With the new cabinet named and many of the junior ministerial positions filled, attention in Westminster turns back to the business of actually governing the country. May will tell MPs not to gamble with the safety of British families ahead of a Commons vote on whether to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent during a Commons debate later today.
Labour has attacked the decision to hold the debate at all and some MPs are threatening to abstain.
The first steps are also being taken towards deciding Britain’s footing in negotiations over its exit from the EU. The new Brexit secretary, David Davis, insists Scotland cannot have a veto, despite the prime minister suggesting all of the UK should agree a unified approach.
The Scottish National party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, however, says she will consider calling a second independence referendum if no satisfactory UK-wide approach is established.
Short, sharp shock?
Elsewhere finance chiefs are predicting that the UK economy will have to weather a short, sharp shock, with Brexit uncertainty holding back both business investment and consumer spending. As forecasters cut growth expectations, a survey of finance chiefs showed caution increasing since the referendum, and retailers reported fewer shoppers on the high street than a year ago. Severe dents to confidence mean the post-referendum economy is on “a very different path” from three months ago, said the EY Item Club, a forecasting group that uses Treasury modelling. It has slashed its predictions of economic growth for the next few years.
Read these
The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliot, writes:
Almost four weeks have passed since Britain voted to leave the EU, and those who wanted to remain in it are having trouble accepting the result. They feel bereft. They feel that they were defeated by underhand means. They feel that those who voted for Brexit were uneducated and didn’t really understand what they were doing.
Read that in full here.
In a Guardian article, Labour shadow ministers Emily Thornberry and Clive Lewis call the Trident vote a “contemptible trick”.
And Zoe Williams takes a look at Owen Smith’s chances in the Labour leadership race.
And another thing
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